Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

As a practitioner of labor and employment law, I understand the benefits of engaging employees with both written and verbal feedback to address goals, performance, expectations and behavior. “Put it in writing” is the advice I provide to my clients for addressing both positive and negative performance and behaviors. As an attorney, my goal is train clients to engage employees on an on-going basis so that they will have high performance employees or be in a position to terminate an employee with confidence that they have the documentary evidence necessary to defend a claim of discrimination, retaliation, or wrongful discharge. As a manager, I realize that taking my own advice is not always easy.

Documentation, especially the dreaded “write-up” or “Corrective Action” carries a stigma in many corporate cultures. As managers we must eliminate the stigma and bring our corporate culture to the point where written feedback and performance (and behavior) management is the norm. Even quality employees who consistently perform need feedback. Business is about the bottom line, and managers have a duty to manage employees to serve the bottom line in a way that benefits everyone.

Human Resources (HR) plays a vital role in providing a sustained competitive advantage to the organization. Many organizations fail to see HR functions as a strategic collective process. To position HR management as a value-added process, organizations must combine intergraded HR functions with the organization’s long term business strategy. A strategic process consists of interconnected disciplines from talent and organizational management to create a holistic process. Once these functions are intergraded, they can be implemented with long-term goals and objectives.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the process of identifying an organization’s long-term goals and objectives and then determining the best ways to achieve them. The process of strategic planning has been characterized as a process that:

Determines an organization’s current situation.

Involves long-term planning for periods ranging from three years to two decades.

Formulating a strategy and identifying objectives to achieve it.

Continual monitoring assures successfully implementation.

Tactical Planning

Tactical Planning is the process of taking the strategic plan and breaking it down into specific, short term actions and plans. The relative length of the planning horizon will vary from one market to another but typically the strategic plan will cover a period greater than three years while the tactical plan covers the period from today through to the end of year three.

Reasons for Merging HR Tactical functions and Strategic process:

Tactical Planning

Strategic Planning

Focuses on the short term goals of the organization, typically a 1 to 18 month time frame.

An organization’s long term goals and objectives, which usually ranges from 3 to 5 years.

It’s all about the How(i.e., process) of things that can be done.

Guides the fundamental decisions and actions that will shape the long term direction of a business.

Focus is on operations; including creating and executing effective and efficient action plans such as improving customer service, reducing the number of outside commitments to simplify your life, and creating action plans for your strategic (big picture) objectives.

It answer questions like Who (you are), What (you want to accomplish) and Why (reasons behind the accomplishments).

Manage and control administrative problems, organizational conflict and monitor compliance.

Identify major competitive advantages in an organization.

Tactical planning and strategic planning are integrally related and must be aligned to complete an effective HR process. Tactical planning should focus on what to do in the short term to help the organization achieve the long term objectives determined by strategic planning.